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GLADSTONE, MORLEY AND THE 
CON^^EDERATE LOAN 

OF 1863 
Z\ ^ectificatiOR 

By 

JOHN BIGELOW, LL.D. 



■• O-Uy take heeil to thybelf, and keep 
:liy soul dilit;ent'-, Uit thou/orget the 
things which thine eyes saw .... 
but make them known unto thy children 
ar.'l thy children's children." 

Deuteronomy IV. 9. 



2 1 GRAMERCY PARK 

NEW YORK 

1905 




gass 'z-\^^ ^ 
Book : S-'S- 



Xest >^(i JFor^et 



GLADSTONE. MORLEY AND THE 
CONFEDERATE LOAN 

OF 1863 

AMONG the by no means infrequent occasions on 
^ which the late Mr. Gladstone indiscreetly placed 
himself before the public on the defensive, there was 
one about which his chosen and gifted biographer, 
usually so prompt in his hero's defense, maintains a 
mysterious reserve. In the year 1865 a report, having 
its origin in official sources, found its way into the pub- 
lic press to the effect that Mr. Gladstone, while Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, had been a subscriber to the 
Confederate 7% Cotton Loan brought out by the 
Erlangers in London and Paris in 1863. The only 
notice taken by Mr. Morley of this report, which pro- 
duced, naturally, a world-wide sensation at the time, 
may be found in the following half-dozen lines in the 
second volume of his biography on page 83, and after 
a devotion of four full pages to an extenuation of 
Gladstone's famous "simple mistake" at Newcastle. 
"Among the many calumnies poured upon him in 
this connection," says Mr. Morley, "was the charge 
that he had been a subscriber to the Confederate 
Loan. 'The statement' (he wrote to a correspondent, 

3 



October 17, 1865) 'is not only untrue, but it is so en- 
tirely void of the slightest shadow of support in any 
imaginable incident of the case, that I am hardly able 
to ascribe it to mere error, and am painfully perplexed 
as to the motives which could have prompted so mis- 
chievous a forgery.' " 

Though Mr. Morley does not formally adopt or con- 
firm the "statement," which he calls a calumny, I am 
not going to reproach him for using this offensive ex- 
pression upon the authority of one whom he may be 
excused for regarding as the most competent witness. 

For reasons I propose presently to disclose, I have 
not the same excuse for allowing Mr. Gladstone's 
statement to go unchallenged. 

Therefore, acting as I generally try to, upon the 
Golden Rule of doing as I would be done by, I ad- 
dressed to Mr, Morley a brief history of the incident 
which Mr. Gladstone alludes to as a " mischievous 
forgery," indulging the hope of a reply that would 
spare me the necessity of taking any public notice of 
it personally. In this I was disappointed. Mr. 
Morley's reply was as follows : 

July 29, 1904. 
Flower Mead, Wimbledon Park, S.W. 
Dear Sir : 

I have duly received your letter of July 21. Of the tone of it 
I have no right to make any sort of complaint. On the other 
hand I do not see that it falls upon me to undertake any reply. 
A certain allegation was made affecting Mr. Gladstone. He em- 
phatically declared it wholly unfounded. This repudiation I tran- 
scribed, and in doing so I spoke of the original allegations as a 
calumny. Unless I disbeheve Mr. Gladstone, a calumny it was. 

4 



I did not and I do not disbelieve Mr. Gladstone. So far as I un- 
derstand your position, it is not a refutation of his denial but a 
vindication of your own good faith in giving credence to the story. 

Yours very truly, 

John Morlev. 

This letter, I repeat, disappointed me. As Mr. Mor- 
ley still thinks, however, that he was warranted in 
stigmatizing the publication of the bankers' list as a 
calumny, in the most widely circulated biography of 
our time, he has made it seem to be my duty to the 
memory of Mr. Seward as well as to myself to make 
a public record of an official incident with which Mr. 
Morley appears to have been but imperfectly ac- 
quainted. 



I. 

IN the fall of 1865 I was a guest at a bal costume- 
given at the palace of the Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs in Paris. In the course of the evening- M. 
Drouyn de Lhuys brought up and presented to me an 
English gentleman who, he said, had expressed a 
desire to make my acquaintance. 

The gentleman's name was Dugald Forbes Camp- 
bell. It appeared in the course of our interview that 
he was acting as an attorney for S. Isaac Campbell 
& Co.' of London, the owners of a barque called the 
Springbok which had been overtaken on our coast 
and condemned as a blockade-runner. He wished to 

1 The firm consisted of Samuel Isaac and Saul Isaac, though Moses' Bro- 
thers had a beneficial interest in the cargo. 



satisfy me that she was nothing of the sort, but was 
in American waters about lawful business; and that 
if I would impress that view upon the Government I 
was representing at that time, I would be doing the 
just and proper thing. By way, I suppose, of warm- 
ing up my interest in his clients' case, he allowed me 
to know that he had himself been one of the victims 
of the Confederate 7% Cotton Loan of 1863,^ in com- 
pany with a number of well-known members of Par- 
liament and the press. Among them he surprised me 
by pronouncing the name of Mr. Gladstone. A care- 
ful cross-examination satisfied me that he had seen the 
list of the subscribers at the bankers' who had it in 
charge. I showed, I suppose, a lack of absolute con- 
fidence in his authorities rather than in himself, and I 
asked him if he could procure for me a copy of the 
subscription list. He thought he could and promised 
to try. 

1 What was meant by the Confeder- figure. They were allowed a commis- 

ate Cotton Loan, as cited by Mr. Mor- sion of 5% on the value of the loan 

ley, will be intelligible to so limited a placed, and also on any difference be- 

portion of the readers of this genera- tween yj% and the actual price re- 

tion that their attention is invited here ceived. 

to a brief explanation of its origin and In March, 1863, the plan for the 

fate. loan was announced in London, and it 

In January, 1863, the Confederates was at once placed upon the market 

conceived the plan of supplying the in Paris and Frankfurt by Erlanger & 

means of carrying on the war against Co., in London and Amsterdam by 

their lawful government by entering J. H. Schroeder & Co., and in Liver- 

into a contract with Erlanger & Co. pool by Fraser, Trenholm il' Co. 

of Paris to guarantee ^3,000,000 in They were offered to the public for 

twenty-year bonds, to bear 7% in- subscription at 90 ; the contract for 

terest, payable semi-annually. Each the loan had been kept so secret that 

bond was made exchangeable at its not until the advertisements of it ap- 

face value for New Orleans middling peared in the foreign papers did the 

cotton, at the rate of sixpence a pound, public in the Confederate States or 

at any time not later than six months elsewhere know the details of it. The 

after the ratification of a treaty of peace London Stock Exchange did not give 

with the Washington government. it official recognition, and in France, 

Erlanger guaranteed the subscription Drouyn de Lhuys, the Minister of 

to the loan at 77% of its face value; Foreign Affairs, while expressing 

in other words, they purchased the wishes for the success of the loan, 

bonds from the Government at that advised Mr. Slidell, the Confederate 



I treated his blockade-running as a matter not 
within my jurisdiction, but recommended him to em- 
ploy a lawyer in America to bring the case before the 
proper authorities at Washington. He asked me 
also if I could recommend a lawyer. I named to him 
Mr. Evarts, who then happened to be in London, and 
assured him that his case could not be in better hands. 
Whether at my instance or otherwise, Mr. Evarts 
was retained. 

Not many days elapsed before I received from Mr. 
Campbell the promised memoranda and several cir- 
culars relating to the loan. In a postscript to his let- 
ter he said : 

" You should try and get hold of a list of the F7'ench 
holders of the loan. You would find the name of Per- 
signy, Mocquard, Fleury, and a number of other in- 
fluential people. That information might be really 
useful to you hereafter." 



Commissioner in Paris, to rely upon 
circulars, and refused his consent to 
advertise it, till overruled by the Em- 
peror. The loan was treated with 
great favor by the London Times 
and the Economist, the latter rating 
these cotton bonds higher than our 
Federal securities on the English mar- 
ket. The Confederate Government 
was known to hold in its possession 
over 350,000 bales of cotton, which at 
6d. a pound would sui^ce to cancel 
the entire loan. These considerations 
led to a favorable reception of the 
bonds, and in two days the loan was 
reported to have been over-subscribed 
in London alone, and the total sub- 
scription to have five times exceeded 
its face value. The bonds at once ad- 
vanced to 95/^, the highest point they 
ever reached. Then a reaction set in, 
the purchasers then beginning to real- 
ize that all their security was in cot- 
ton that was locked up in the United 



States by the blockading fleet of the 
Federal Government. To make their 
security available it was necessary to 
break the blockade by "running it," 
or by securing an acknowledgment of 
the independence of the Confederate 
States. Running the blockade did not 
prove profitable. During the first nine 
months of 1863, when blockade-run- 
ning was most profitable, the bond 
purchasers realized — from cotton, the 
Confederate currency — only $8101.78, 
and that was the most they ever real- 
ized in any one year. 

It soon became apparent that if 
they had to depend upon "blockade- 
running" their bonds had only a nom- 
inal value, and it was therefore during 
this period that the Queen's govern- 
ment showed most disposition to re- 
cognize the independence of the South, 
for which Mr. Gladstone was sent in 
October to Newcastle to prepare the 
public mind. 



The following list was among the papers referred 
to in his note: 

Sir Henry de Houghton, Bart ^180,000 

Isaac Campbell & Co., of 71 Jermyn Street, London, 

army contractors 150,000 

Thomas Sterling Begbie, 50 Mansion House Place, 

London, ship-owner 140,000 

The Marquis of Bath 50,000 

James Spence, Liverpool, correspondent of the Times 

(under initials) 50,000 

Mr. Beresford Hope 40,000 

George Edward Seymour, stock-broker, Throgmorton 

Street, London 40,000 

Messrs. Fernie 30,000 

Alex. Colhe & partners 20,000 

Fleetwood, Patten, Wilson, L. Schuster, directors of 

Union Bank, London (together) 20,000 

W. S. Lindsay 20,000 

Sir Coutts Lindsay, Baronet 20,000 

John Laird, M.P., Birkenhead 20,000 

M. B. Sampson, city editor Times 15,000 

John Thaddeus Delane, editor Tiines 10,000 

Lady Georgiana Fane (sister of Lord Westmoreland) 1 5,000 

J. S. Gilliat, director of Bank of England .... 10,000 

D. Forbes Campbell, 45 Dover Street, Piccadilly, London 30,000 

George Peacock, M.P 5,000 

Lord Wharncliflfe 5'Ooo 

W. H. Gregory, M.P 4,000 

W. J. Rideout, proprietor London Morning Post . . 4,000 

Edward Akenroyd i>5°° 

Lord Campbell 1,000 

Lord Donoughomore 1,000 

Lord Richard Grosvenpr 1,000 

Hon. Evelyn Ashley, son of Lord Shaftesbury, and 

private secretary to Lord Palmerston .... 500 

Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone 2,000 

^^885,000 



II 

RELUCTANT in so grave a matter to act upon any 
but the best testimony available, I determined to 
ask the Hon. John Bright, who was in exception- 
ally close political relations with Mr. Gladstone, to 
oblige me, and, as I presumed, Mr. Gladstone also, by 
ascertaining from him the truth or falsity of the Camp- 
bell story before discharging my duty to my govern- 
ment, should its falsity not be established. This de- 
termination led to the following correspondence: 

Paris, July 26, 1865. 
My dear Mr. Bright : 

I have in my possession what I have reason to consider an au- 
thentic Hst of the principal holders of the Confederate Loan in 
England. Among them I was sorry to observe the Right Hon. 
Wm. E. Gladstone a subscriber for jP^2ooo. As there may be a 
mistake about this and as the hst I refer to is destined to become 
a public document if nothing occurs to invalidate it, I have thought 
it best to ask you to ascertain, if you have any convenient way of 
doing so, whether Mr. Gladstone was a subscriber to that loan or 
not. I should be sorry to do him the wrong of publishing his 
name in America among the names of the men engaged in that 
swindhng transaction, if it does not rightly belong there. If on 
the other hand he did choose to back his opinion that Jefferson 
Davis had "created a nation " to the extent of ^2000, I think the 
world should know it ; at least I shall take care that my govern- 
ment is advised of it. 

Among other subscribers I notice the names of two other gen- 
tlemen, who were doubtless chivalrously backing their opinions. 
One is M. B. Sampson, City Editor of the Titnes., whose interest in 
the new nation was represented by ^15,000, and J. T. Delane, 
also of the Times, whose interest was represented by ^^10,000. 

A private secretary of Lord Palmerston, the son of Lord Shaftes- 
bury, ventured ^^500. 

9 



I congratulate you upon the result of the elections. I think 
cheap newspapers begin to tell upon the government of England. 

Yours very sincerely, 

John Bigelow. 

To this letter I received in a few days the foilow- 
ing reply : 

Rochdale, July 31, 1865. 
My dear Mr. Bigelow : 

I do not see how I can get the information about Mr. Gladstone 
except by a direct application to him, and I do not think I can take 
the liberty to write to him on such a matter, "having differed from 
him so entirely on the American question. He would think I was 
meddling with what was not my business, and would deem me rather 
impertinent than friendly. I shall be surprised if it should turn out 
that his name is in the list and for so small a sum as ^^2000. He 
is not a rich man, but I think he would scarcely enter into anything 
so doubtful and for so small an amount. There are persons of the 
name of Gladstone in London and in Liverpool and Manchester, 
but he is the only W. E. Gladstone so far as I know. 

If you are satisfied of the reality or validity of the list, I think it 
should be published. Perhaps you would have no objection to 
send me a copy of the list. I have often wished to see it ; it need 
not be published here unless you think proper, but I should like to 
bring out the fact that Sampson and Delane were large subscribers 
to the Loan. It would help to lessen the power of the gang who 
manage the Times and make money out of the credulity of the 
pubhc. 

I am going down into Wales for a few days, to return by the end 
of the week ; after that I may possibly get away to Scotland for a 
fortnight, to have some salmon fishing in the river Spey, that is, if 
we have rain to put the rivers in order. 

If you can, let me have a copy of the "black list" ; I think some 
good may be done with it. 

Always very sincerely yours, 

John Bright. 



Ill 

THE tone of this letter left me no longer doubtful 
of my duty to communicate my convictions to 
Mr. Seward, though I accepted the statements of Mr. 
Campbell with difficulty, notwithstanding the distin- 
guished auspices under which he had been presented 
to me. How could I doubt their substantial ac- 
curacy after reading this reply to my friendly appeal? 
Through the diplomatic representative of the United 
States Government in Paris, a report reaches Mr. 
Bright having every appearance of authenticity, that 
his official superior the Queen's Chancellor of the 
Exchequer had been purchasing securities of insur- 
gents against our government, and at the very time 
too when the Prime Minister and the Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, as well as himself, were seriously 
considering the expediency of acknowledging the in- 
dependence of the Confederate States: in other words, 
of declaring war upon the United States. Mr. Bright 
did not feel free either to deny the report uncon- 
ditionally himself, or to ask his political chief what 
answer should be made to a question of such grave 
import coming from such a profoundly interested quar- 
ter. If I could not infer from his letter that Mr. 
Bright thought Mr. Gladstone guilty, much less might 
I infer that he was sure of his innocence. Upon what 
ground could Mr. Gladstone think that his friend and 
parliamentary colleague was meddling with what was 
none of his business, or deem it an impertinent or 
other than a friendly interpellation, except upon the 
theory that the question was one Mr. Gladstone would 
not like to answer? 



Mr. Bright would have been surprised, he writes, if 
it should turn out that Gladstone's name was on the 
list, not altogether because it was too indecent a thing 
for a minister of the crown to have put it there, but 
because he was down for so small a sum. In other 
words, the offense would have been less improbable 
had it been greater. It occurred to me that perhaps 
Mr. Gladstone was a man whom his parliamentary 
colleagues were bound to regard as above suspicion. 
But Mr. Bright clearly did not think him quite above 
suspicion. Why should he, with his full knowledge 
of that statesman's undisguised sympathy with the Con- 
federacy, of which more presently, and with a letter 
in his hand from an American minister showing that 
the rumor was regarded as authentic in quarters 
where such an impression could work incalculable 
mischief, even if false ? What excuse had he for not 
giving Mr. Gladstone an opportunity of contradicting 
the story before it crossed the Atlantic, unless it was 
an excuse borrowed from the etiquette of the Roman 
Curia, — "II ne faut pas decouvrir le Pape." 

I no longer hesitated to refer Mr. Campbell's reve- 
lations to a tribunal which would have no scruples 
about putting Mr. Gladstone himself on the stand as 
a witness. 



BIGELOW TO SEWARD 

Paris, August 2, 1865. 
Dear Sir: 

I have the honor to transmit to you four enclosures, copies of a 
correspondence which has been recently communicated to me and 
which seems worthy of being preserved among the archives of the 



State Department. If of no immediate practical value it will serve 
the future historian a useful purpose in explaining some of the inci- 
dents of our war during the last four years that have seemed hitherto 
to most people incomprehensible. 

The first enclosure is a letter signed by A. J. B. Beresford Hope, 
W. S. Lindsay and Robert Bourke, dated from Acklow House, 
Nov. 7, 1863, inviting some thirty-one persons whose names are 
given to consent to the use of their names in organizing a " South- 
ern Independence Association with the object of diffusing informa- 
tion as to the merits of the war in America and of keeping before 
the mind of the British public the policy and justice of recognizing 
the independence of the Confederate States at the earliest possible 
moment." 

The iirst person on this list, who it seems was not proof against 
the flattering attention, was Mr. Alexander Baring, a member I 
beheve of the banking house with which the United States keeps 
its European account. 

Enclosure No. 2, date Nov. 23, acknowledges receipt of the 
requisite number of acceptances and invites a meeting on the 2nd 
December following. 

Enclosure No. 3, dated the same day, Dec. 2nd, covers a draft 
Constitution which the members of the Committee are invited to 
vote upon at a meeting to be held on the 12th of the same month. 

Enclosure No. 4 is a list of public men in England who have 
been the principal purchasers of Confederate bonds, with the 
amounts of their respective interests. 

Several of the persons on this list are the natural prey of design- 
ing rogues, but there are other names there which you will see with 
astonishment. The first of this class is the last on the list, the Rt. 
Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone. That a prominent public man who has 
hazarded the opinion that " Jefferson Davis had made a nation " 
should feel called upon, at least in England, to back his opinions 
with his purse, is not strange ; but one would have supposed that a 
Chancellor of the Exchequer would have chosen some mode of 
doing it less prejudicial to his fame as a financier. 

Two of the editors of the London Times also figure in the list 
for an aggregate of ^^2 5,000. This also to an habitual reader of 
the Times furnishes food for reflection. 

13 



The Sir Henry de Houghton who leads ofiF on the hst with a 
subscription of ^180,000 was the gentleman who headed the peti- 
tion you declined to receive, of some 350,000 English people, more 
or less, praying President Lincoln, or Congress, or both, to " let 
the wayward sisters go." 

Thomas S. Begbie, James Spence of Liverpool — the favored 
correspondent of the Times under the signature of "S."— and 
Messrs. Charles Joyce & Co. have all failed. 

The persons enumerated in Enclosure No. 4 held at one time, I 
am told, nearly one half of the entire Confederate loan and justly 
enough have been the severest sufferers by it. The credit of indit- 
ing the enclosed circulars and constitution, of which the grammar is 
unfortunately by no means the most discreditable feature, belongs 
exclusively to the Hon. A. J. B. Beresford Hope. 

I am, Sir, &c. 



In compliance with Mr. Bright's request I sent him 
the list I had received, and in case he thought it 
should be published I suggested the Daily News, 
adding however: 

"If any different disposition of the documents com- 
mends itself to your judgment, please consider them 
at your disposal subject to the condition of silence in 
regard to their source, already stipulated for." 

In a few days I received the following from Mr. 
Bright: 



Rochdale, Augt. 10, 1865. 
My dear Mr. Bigelow : 

I was disposed to send the list of names to the Star — but I 
am not sure whether it is best to publish them first here or in 
America. I am told there is or was a W. E. Gladstone in Lon- 
don — and I know there were some of the name intimate with, or 
connected with, W. Lindsay — for I once met father and son 

14 



(Gladstone) at his house. I cannot believe the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer to be one of the subscribers to the Loan. 

If the list is correct, it does not follow that the losses are correctly 
given — for a man might subscribe, and afterwards sell out before 
any serious fall had taken place. 

The correspondence is doubtless quite authentic — for there was 
no occasion for Beresford Hope and his co-laborers to avoid pub- 
licity, when "respectable" public opinion was running so much on 
their side. 

It is curious to see the name of Mr. Geo. Edw'd Seymour, on the 
list of subscribers. He was in favor of Secesh and so far was not 
inconsistent, — but he is now the chief proprietor of the Daily 
News, and a Tory in English politics. For this reason I think 
that paper is not the one in which the publication could be most 
properly made. 

If any of the persons in the list should object, and deny its cor- 
rectness — is it possible that an action for libel could be sustained 
against the newspaper? I think not, if nothing was said about 
losses incurred — for it is only by a statement of losses that a man's 
credit could be injured. 

I suspect the list is by no means complete — but the large sub- 
scribers might distribute some of the stock to other persons. 

I have heard that many ladies of rank have subscribed to the 
Loan, and have lost money in it. I hope it may do them good, 
and teach them a useful lesson. 

I don't know the name of the Paris Correspondent of the Star^ 
but he might bring out the whole story in a special letter. You 
can think the matter over. 

By the way — you only give a list up to ^^898, coo — this is no 
more than one third of the whole Loan, and leads to the opinion 
that it is very incorrect, or very partial. 

I wish I could have come to Dieppe — but I am fast at home just 
now. My children are here from school — and my brother is away 
in Ireland on a fishing excursion, and business affairs just now are 
too critical to be left without care. I wish your people would send 
us some cotton — we are sorely troubled for want of it. 

I will not intrude on you during your journey to Liverpool. If 
it had been suitable, or possible for you, I should have been glad 

15 



to have seen you at our house — but Mrs. Bigelow will not hke com- 
pany now when she returns to England. i 

If anything occurs to you about the list, write to me. I will con- 
sult only a judicious friend about it. 

I am always sincerely yours, 

John Bright. 

Early in September I wrote again to Mr. Seward : 

The lists of subscribers referred to in your dispatch No. 228 
were furnished me by one of the parties whose name is on the list 
of subscribers to the loan to a pretty large amount. I expect him 
in town between the 15th and 20th inst. and I will endeavor to get 
from him farther and more conclusive evidence of the authenticity 
of the list. . . . Before putting these papers among the archives 
of our government at Washington I wrote to Bright asking him to 
ascertain if Gladstone — the only one about whom I have any 
doubt — had been dabbling in this business. His reply led me to 
send him a copy of the correspondence and list. 

I enclose both his letters. In the last, allusion is made to a pro- 
posal of mine to have the documents given publicity through the 
columns of the London News or N. Y. Herald or both in a corre- 
spondence from Paris. I know of no better way of determining 
their authenticity if any doubt remains after my next interview with 
the gentleman who furnished them. If you should have any objec- 
tion to this course please let me know. You need not give me 
your permission. The correspondent of the N. Y. Herald and of 
the Daily News (London) is the same person, and in spite of what 
Bright says I think there would be no objection to the publication 
of them in that journal. Seymour has not a controlling interest in 
the Daily News nor would he care much if he were published as a 
subscriber. Yours &c. 



1 Referring to a domestic affliction which we had experienced during 
Mrs. Bigelow's brief absence on a visit to the States. 

16 



BIGELOW TO SEWARD 

Oct. 20, 1865. 
My dear Sir: 

I had hoped to receive some explanation of the amendments 
made through the press lately to the list of Confederate bondhold- 
ers which I sent you. Campbell expected to be in Paris last week, 
but has not yet come. My impression is that the denial of many, 
who have denied, was technical. That their names were down on 
the records of the bankers, who had the selhng of the loan, I have 
no doubt, with or without their formal consent. The truth is likely 
to come out. The leakage has begun already, as you will see by 
the reports of a meeting of the Confederate bondholders in Lon- 
don on the 1 8th inst, which appears in the London News and 
Herald. I send you copies. 

It is gratifying to observe how very odious an offense it had be- 
come in England to have had anything to do with Confederate 
finances. Mason was compelled to deny that he had sent home a 
list. Why deny sending it if the parties accused were not on it ? 
And why not rather deny that they were not on it, if they were 
not ? The sudden silence of the press in England goes to show 
that it will not bear discussion. 

To this letter I received the following reply : 

Washington, 4th November, 1865. 
My dear Sir: 

Recurring to your private note of the 19th of October, I have to 
express my approval of the opinions and suggestions it contains in 
regard to the holders of the Rebel debt. The British nation owes 
us fuller and more free information concerning the character of 
those conspirators than its press thus far has given. 
Beheve me, my dear Sir, 

Yours very faithfully, 

William H. Seward. 

17 



IV 



^T^HE responsibility for giving the list of subscrib- 
X ers for the loan to the public was destined not 
to devolve upon me ; for while deliberating about it a 
copy from New York papers was published at length 
in the London Star, on or about the 5th of October. 

Its publication naturally produced an explosion felt 
throughout Her Majesty's dominions. In the course 
of a week nearly a dozen letters — not more, I believe 
— appeared in one or another of the London dailies 
whose editors or staff were incriminated, some ad- 
mitting and some denying responsibility for the 
appearance of their names in what in 1863 was 
deemed a very eligible place but in 1865 had become 
very much the reverse. The London Times char- 
acterized it as "The Lying List," and said, "there 
can be no doubt now that the so-called list of Confed- 
erate bondholders is what we believed it to be from 
the beginning, a foolish and malicious forgery." And 
its corifrerie, Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, joined in 
the cry with such canine unanimity that the English 
public seemed to be honestly persuaded that the 
whole thing was what in newspaper argot is familiarly 
known as a fake. 

Before proceeding to an analysis of these denials 
to show how far the Times of that day was in error, 
it will be necessary to bring to my readers' attention 
a paragraph in my letter to Mr. Seward of August 
2nd, just cited, referring to some thirty or forty gen- 
tlemen who accepted the hospitalities of Mr. A. J. B. 
Beresford Hope at Acklow House for the purpose of 



organizing "The Southern Independence Associa- 
tion," "to keep before the minds of the British pubhc 
the poHcy and justice of recognizing the independence 
of the Confederate States at the earhest possible mo- 
ment." This meeting, was held in response to a cir- 
cular signed by A. J. B. Beresford Hope, W. S. Lind- 
say and Robert Bourke. 

It deserves to be noticed that those whose names 
are marked with a star (*) contributed no money to 
this organization ; all the rest, marked with a dagger 
(t), did ; and all whose names are printed in italics, 
eleven in number, were also on the list first sent by 
me to Mr. Seward and to Mr. Briorht as subscribers 
to the Confederate Loan : 



Alexander Baring, Esq., M.P., 

Marquis of Bath, 

Hon. Robert Bourke, 

Lord Campbell, 

Lord R. Cecil, 

Earl of Donoughoinore, 

Hon. Ernest Buncombe, 

Sir James Ferguson, M.P., 

W. R. Seymour Fitzgerald, M.P., 

J. S. Gilliat, Esq., 
W. H. Gregory, Esq., M.P., 
Colonel Greville, M.P., 
Judge Haliburton, M.P., 
A. J. B. Beresford Hope, 
Sir E. Harrison, Bart., M.P., 
Marquis of Lothian, 
Sir Coutts Lindsay, Bart., 
W. S. Lindsay, Esq., M.P., 
* George Peacock, Esq., M.P., 



accepted 



refused to join, after con- 
sulting Lord Derby 
accepted 



19 



* James Spefice, Esq., accepted 
t Lieut. Col. C. M. Stuart, M.P., 

t Lord Edwin H. Trevor, M.P., 

t William Vansittart, Esq., M.P., refused to join 

* Lord E. Cecil, accepted 
t Sir A. H. Elton, Bart., 

] Lord Wharjicliffe, " 

* Edivard Ankroyd, Esq., " 

* G. E. Seymour, Esq., " 

* Hon. C. Fitzwilliam, M.P., 

* John Laird, Esq., M. P., 

* W. Scholefield, Esq., M.P., 

Accepted 29 

Declined 2 

Known to have contributed money . 8 



I will now briefly analyse the list of Confederate 
bondholders which I first sent to Mr. Seward and 
which contained the names of all who professed to 
have been aggrieved by the publication. 



The largest subscriber to the loan and first on 
that list was Sir Henry de Houghton a cousin of 
the late Lord Houghton, for ^180,000. It will be 
seen by the following letter from him to the Lon- 
don Herald t\\2it. he had no complaints to make at 
the public association of his name with the loan, 
except for being treated by the press as a fictitious 
personage. When this gentleman with his 350,- 
000 compatriots united in a formal appeal to 
President Lincoln to " let the wayward sisters 
go," he omitted to disclose 180,000 reasons for his 
forgetting that he asks once too oft who asks to 
be refused. 



To the Editor of the Lo)idon " Herald^ 
Sir : 

Some evenings ago a paragraph appeared in the Fall Mall 
Gazette, asking "Who is Sir Henry de Houghton?" cavil- 
ing at the American newspapers for beheving in the existence 
of such a fictitious personage, and still more that they should 
have credited that he had been involved in the Confederate 
Cotton Loan. 

What the purport or intention of that article was, remains 
for the Pall Mall Gazette to explain for I cannot ; and can 
only appeal to you to let me make it known through your 
columns that I do exist, and to state that if I was alone in 
my silence with regard to the list of contributors to the Con- 
federate Cotton Loan, I have the merit of truth on my side. 
Also that if I did lose by that loan even the sum attributed to 
my name by the Pall Mall Gazette, I at least was not ashamed 
of the cause in which I lost it, nor sought to fall away from 
my friends when that cause came to its worst. 

I stood loyally by the Southern people from first to last, 
and I believe there is not an American (be he North or 
South) who would condemn me for adhering throughout to 
a losing cause, which I believed, and still believe, to have 
been a just one. 

I have no desire to make mischief with regard to the list 
which the Pall Mall Gazette is pleased to designate as " an 
impudent forgery " ; but, perhaps, it may some day become 
known that Mr. Bigelow and Mr. Seward were not quite so 
much befooled in it as they were supposed to be. 

I have the honor to be. Sir, your obedient servant, 

Henry de Houghton. 

No. 1 6 Cockspur Street, S.W., and Houghton Tower, 
April 25. Lancashire. 

Isaac Campbell & Co., army contractors, are down 
on the list of bondhold- 
ers for ^150,000 

and their agent, D. Forbes 

Campbell, for . . . 30,000 ;/^i8o,ooo 



They made no complaint that their name was 
forged, but on the contrary it was to the latter 
gentleman, their agent, I was indebted for the 
names not only of himself and his principal, but of 
all the other subscribers named. If we consider 
the amount of their combined interest in the loan, 
we must conclude that they were as likely as any 
to know what company they were keeping. 

3. Thomas Sterling Begbie, a ship-owner and 
blockade-runner, has made no complaint of the 
use of his name, though it was down for ^,'140,000. 
He also was interested with Isaac Campbell & 
Co. in the Springbok. 

4. The Marquis of Bath, whose name is on the list 
for ^50,000, does not appear among the remon- 
strants, though he might have been excused from 
subscribing to this loan, as he was one of the or 
ganizers of the Southern Independence Associa- 
tion, to which he contributed in money, no doubt 
liberally, as he is one of the richest peers in Eng- 
land. He had the special advantage of being the 
cousin of Alexander Baring, the banker and Mem- 
ber of Parliament. Both were active members of 
the Southern Independence Association. The 
Marquis also appears to have received interest 
once at least as it fell due on his bonds. 

5. James Spence, one of the bankers of the Con- 
federacy, was also a Liverpool correspondent of 
the London Times. He did not deny that he 
was a subscriber for ^50,000. He also was an 
active member of the Southern Independence 
Association. 

Spence was offended by the employ of the 
Erlangers to bring out the Cotton Loan, regard- 



ing it as an invasion of his bailiwick; and under 
threats of throwing his bonds upon the market at 
50%, the Richmond government felt compelled to 
placate him with a douceur of ^6000. He was 
the Liverpool banker for the Confederacy until 
he discontented the Richmond government with 
the antislavery tone of some of his effusions in 
the Times, and his agency for the Confederacy 
was abruptly terminated. Thereupon he sent in 
a bill for ^'15,000 for his services. After much 
wrangling and threatening, his peace was pur- 
chased for ^12,000.-^ 

6. A. J. B. Beresford Hope was on the list for 
^40,000. He wrote to the Times, "The state- 
ment is a fabrication which has not even a basis 
of truth to stand upon. I never held a farthing 
of the loan." 

Mr. Hope may not have written his name on 
the list, but a statement sworn to before a London 
notary says that his name is on the bankers' list 
for just ^40,000 bonds, and it concerns him more 
even than the public to know who put it there 
and why. 

If Mr. Hope's name was put there, with or 
without his help, it could have done him no harm; 
for he did so much more in aid of the insurgents 
than investing in their loan, that his denial of it 
was as disingenuous as it would have been had 
he really taken the bonds. He was at this time, 
and is still, I presume, if living, the proprietor of 
the Saturday Review, a weekly publication which 
from the day of its birth has rarely, even by acci- 
dent, had anything in its columns for our Republic 

1 Bigelow's " France and the Confederate Navy : An International Episode." 
New York. Harper & Brothers, 1888. 

23 



less cruel than a sneer. He was also author of 
the circular which convoked the thirty-odd gen- 
tlemen to his house to organize the Southern 
Independence Association, an organization "built 
in eclipse and rigged with curses dark" for the 
single purpose of devising and supplying the 
speediest means for effecting the territorial dis- 
memberment of the United States and making a 
mock of popular sovereignty throughout the 
world. From thirty to forty of the wealthiest 
and by virtue of their rank most influential men 
in all England were met with him at Acklow 
House to conspire for no nobler or less selfish 
purpose than animated the buccaneers in the 
lagoons of Louisiana the previous century. To 
show that this is doing Mr. Hope no injustice, I 
will cite an extract from the last two pages of an 
address or a lecture which he styled "A Popular 
View of the American War," and which he had 
been reading around the country to inflame the 
minds of English farmers and mechanics against 
our people and institutions: 

" If we look at the map with impartial eyes, we must rise 
convinced that the inevitable design of Providence seems to 
be that the country (U. S. A.) should be divided into at least 
four great commonwealths, the North-West, the Midland (if 
the latter is not rather marked out for two at least, between 
the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains), the South, and 
the Pacific. This division would be well for North America 
itself. Hitherto it has been conscious not so much of 
strength as numbers, and the United States hectored and 
bullied other powers because they had no one to keep them 
in order. Their only neighbors were Canada on the north, 
and the weak Republic of Mexico an the south. Once di- 
vided into a number of commonwealths, each would be a 
check upon the other, and each would fall into the position 

24- 



of a European nation. Each would have to maintain its 
frontier, to keep up a standing army, to have a watchful 
foreign office. . . . 

" Canada in the north, the Confederate States in the south, 
rely chiefly upon agriculture, and is it not common sense that 
the great intermediate fnanufacturing district, turbulent, bluster- 
ing, and aggressive, could best be kept in check by neighbors as 
powerful as itself? There is no need for us to i?iterfere at 
the present. . . . 

" We cannot help seeing that, while Abraham Lincoln is 
an incapable pretender, Jefferson Davis is a bold, a daring, 
yet politic statesman. We may well wish to see the Amer- 
ican States peacefully separate into the great divisions marked 
out by nature ; we may well wish to see bloodshed cease and 
peace restored ; but I contend, and I know the majority of 
thinking men in this country agree with me, though they are 
too mealy-mouthed as yet to say so, that the best and readi- 
est method towards that end will be the establishment, as 
soon as possible, of the complete independence of the Con- 
federate States." 

Mr, Hope was the enfant terrible who disclosed 
in these remarks the hope and expectation which 
inspired and directed the poHcy of her Majesty's 
government in those days. 

7. George Edward Seymour is not among the re- 
monstrants. He was an active member of the 
S. I. A. conspiracy and was down among the 
bondholders for ^40,000. 

8. Messrs. Fernie & Co. held ^30,000 in bonds, and 
as yet have given the public no evidence of dis- 
content with their investment that I am aware of 

9. Alexander Collie and partners were down for 
^20,000 ; nor have they complained of their 
blunder getting into the newspapers. 

25 



10. Four directors of the Union Bank of London were 
down for ^20,000. They also quietly accepted 
the situation, and unless they got Erlanger & 
Co. to persuade the Confederate Commissioner 
to sustain the market by buying back their bonds, 
that sum has doubtless been long since charged 
off to profit and loss. 

11. W. S. Lindsay, M.P., was down for ^20,000. 
His principal business was running the blockade 
and intriguing with France to get her to unite 
with England to break it. In the annexed letter 
to the London Times he pleads the feminine ex- 
cuse for his loss that it "was such a little one." 

To the Editor of the '' Tir/ies." 
Sir : 

I had seen in a local paper the paragraph to which you 
refer in your impression of to-day, headed " The Confederate 
Loan — the Investors and their Losses"; but as it appeared 
to have reached this country from the New York journals 
through the Morning Star, I considered it altogether un- 
worthy of notice, though it states a gross falsehood in regard 
to myself. So far from my loss a7nounting to ^20,000, // will 
not amoufit to one tenth that sum; and I may add that the 
small investment I held in the Confederate Loan was made 
long after the loan was issued, and years after my opinion in 
regard to the war in America had been expressed both in and 
out of Parliament. I hope I may be further allowed to say, 
considering the somewhat active part I took in the cause of 
the South, that beyond the above investment I had no per- 
sonal interest in its success ; but I deeply regret that the 
Southern people, who fought so nobly and so well, were not 
able to achieve their independence. 

I am your obedient servant, 

W. S. Lindsay. 

Manor House, Shepperton, Middlesex, Oct. 5. 
26 



12. Sir CoLitts Lindsay was down for ^"20,000. He 
made no complaint, and was also one of the active 
S. I. A. 

13. John Laird, M.P., the famous Birkenhead ship- 
builder, was down for ^20,000. He wrote to 
the Times: 

"The statement, so far as I am concerned, is untrue, as I 
am not now and never have been directly or indirectly a 
holder or interested in any of that stock." 

On the 5th of November I asked Mr. Campbell 
how Laird's name came on his list. He said that 
the stock was taken in the name of his son, the 
old man having" retired from the firm. 

In a debate in the House of Commons, March 
27, 1863, John Bright charged that a gunboat, the 
Alexandra, had been launched from a shipyard 
in Liverpool, and that two iron-clad rams were 
building by the Lairds at Birkenhead (opposite 
Liverpool), all three intended for Confederate 
cruisers to war upon the United States. John 
Laird, whose sons had built the Alabavia, de- 
clared that in the building of that ship everything 
was perfectly straight and aboveboard; "I would 
rather," he continued, "be handed down to pos- 
terity as the builder of a dozen Alabainas than 
as the man (referring to Bright) who applies him- 
self deliberately to set class against class, and to 
cry up the institutions of another country which, 
when they come to be tested, are of no value 
whatever, and which reduce the very name of 
liberty to an absurdity." His remarks, says the 
Times report, were received with great cheering. 

The Spectator of April 4 said: "We read the 
debate on the Alabama question with profound 

27 



humiliation. . . . As if to remove all doubt 
of the temper of the House, Mr. Laird was not 
ashamed to justify his infraction of the provisions 
of the English Statute Book." 

There was a Laird, Boyd & Co., of Glasgow, 
on the list for ^20,000; whether in any way re- 
lated to the Birkenhead Laird I cannot say. They 
at least made no complaint of being there. 

14. Lady Georgiana Fane interested herself in Con- 
federate bonds to the amount of ^,'15,000. She 
had the good sense to draw her interest, once at 
least when it fell due; besides which her Lady- 
ship received a dividend in experience worth far 
more, I presume and hope, than all the interest 
she received. 

15. J. S. Gilliat, a director of the Bank of England, 
was down for ^10,000, but he has never given 
the public any evidence of being discontented 
with his purchase. It is to be hoped that there 
are not many directors of the Bank of England 
so easily duped as Mr. Gilliat; and yet there were 
three or more uncomplaining Gilliats down on the 
list: 

J. K. Gilliat & Co. . . . ^^25,000 

A. Gilliat 5,000 

W. Gilliat 5,000 

16. George E. Peacock, M.P., wrote to the Thnes: "I 
never held a shilling of the Confederate Loan; I 
do not hold a shilling of the Confederate Loan; 
and, I need scarcely add, I have not the smallest 
intention of doing so." Yet on the sworn list of 
bondholders before me is Mr. Peacock's name for 
^25,000. Not only so, but on this sworn list he 
is also charged with the receipt of the last interest 

28 



paid on his bonds. It would be interesting to 
know who signed the receipt for it. Mr. Peacock 
was also an active member of, and contributor to, 
the Beresford Hope S. I. A. A man not ashamed 
of that investment ought to glory in being merely 
a holder of Confederate Cotton bonds. 

17. LordWharncliffeisdownfor;^5000. He, or some 
one for him, is sworn to have received interest 
on it. He was an active member of, and con- 
tributor to, the Acklow House conspiracy. His 
Lordship wrote to the Times that "that statement 
is an entire falsehood. I never at any time held 
any Confederate stock, nor did I ever buy into 
the loan." It is his duty and not mine to find out 
who has felt warranted in taking his name in vain, 
for it was certainly so taken. 

18. W. H. Gregory, M.P., is down for ^^4000. He 
never appears to have denied it. He received 
his interest, and was an active and paying con- 
tributor to the Acklow House conspiracy. 

19. Edward Ankroyd, down for ;/^i500, writes that 
he "never invested a single farthing in the Con- 
federate stock." He was, however, a member of, 
and contributor to, the Acklow House conspiracy, 
and his name is sworn to figure on the bond list. 
How it came there it was easy for him, and it 
was his duty, to ascertain, if he was ignorant of it. 

20. Lord Campbell is down for /looo, but he never 
troubled the newspapers with any complaint 
about it. He was also an active member of, and 
contributor to, the S. I. A. 

21. Lord Donoughomore was down for ^1000. He 
was also an active member of, and contributor to. 



9 



the S. I. A. He never pretended to be innocent 
of either folly. He is the one who opened the 
eyes of Commissioner Mason to the necessity of 
liberatinor the slaves before the insuro-ents could 
look for any recognition, as a nation, from Eng- 
land. 

2 2, Lord Richard Grosvenor did not deny his sub- 
scription of ^looo to the loan. He was also 
one of the Acklow House conspirators. 



V 



I HAVE thus shown beyond farther question that 
of the twenty-eight alleged subscribers to the first 
published list twenty-two were subscribers either to 
the loan or to the Southern Independence Associa- 
tion organized to cooperate with the insurgents, in a 
far more lawless enterprise than was ever contem- 
plated by Jefferson Davis or any of his deluded fol- 
lowers. 

There remain five others on the list who have com- 
plained. Three of these were editors and two were 
officers of the a-overnment. The editors were : De- 
lane, of the Times, down for ^10,000; Sampson, 
financial editor of the Times, for ^15,000; and Ride- 
out, of the Moi'uiiig Post, for ^4000. 

Mr. Delane said in the Times: "I never applied 
for, never had allotted to me, never purchased either 
of myself or by others, never possessed any Confed- 
erate stock whatever." 

Mr. Sampson wrote: "I beg to say that I have 
never held any Confederate stock, but that I declined 

30 



to accept an allotment offered to me at the time of its 
introductiono" 

Mr. Rideout, the proprietor of the Morning Post, 
the recognized organ of the Prime Minister, " followed 
the example of Mr. Beresford Hope," said the Pall 
Mall Gazette, and publicly denied that he was ever 
interested in the loan. 

There are two ways of declining a crown — the 
Cromwellian way and the Csesarean way — but the 
student of history will not fail to remark that the 
Caesarian way has always proved the more popular. 
The disproportionate amount of the bonds allotted 
to the editor of the financial columns of the Times 
over that allotted to the editor in chief, reveals the 
character of the service to which the gamblers in these 
bonds attached most importance. 

There is a proverbial saying among the Haytians 
that poor people give breakfasts with their hearts. 
By the same token editors give feasts with their pens. 
From the outbreak of the Civil War to its collapse, 
the Pi?nes, whose proprietor had been reported to 
me upon indisputable authority to be assiduously 
courting the Prime Minister for a peerage ; the Morn- 
i7ig Post, which was that Prime Minister's officious 
organ ; the Standard, the leading London Tory pa- 
per (as I believe it continues to be), and the Saturday 
Review, Lord Beresford's property, were each and all 
in full cry for the success of the insurgents, and the 
disintegration of the American Union. Though, like 
the drummer in the fable, they carried no weapons 
and burned no powder, they were as responsible for 
the bloodshed, destruction of property, and misery 

31 



wrought in that war as those who did both ; and had 
they been caught within our Hnes, would have de- 
served to be punished as severely. 

A single article in any of these prints, conceived 
in the spirit which animated all their treatment of the 
Washington government during the Civil War, was 
worth to the Confederates in those days many times 
the price of the stock that was undoubtedly allotted 
to them by somebody. 

It is not a little strange that no one of these gen- 
tlemen took the trouble to ascertain and let the public 
know when and why such a liberty was taken with 
their names; and also why they did not publicly de- 
nounce the offenders, if they esteemed it such a scan- 
dal to be accused of assisting with their money a cause 
which they were assisting to the extent of their ability 
with their brains and pens. 

The same is true, in a way, of the name of Mr. Ash- 
ley, Lord Palmerston's private secretary, a son of the 
then Earl of Shaftesbury. 

I think I am taking no unwarrantable liberty when 
I refer here to a rumor current in well-informed Eng- 
lish circles that Mr. Ashley, who, besides being Lord 
Palmerston's private secretary, became also his biog- 
rapher, found among that nobleman's papers an elab- 
orate memorandum by Mr. Gladstone, advocating the 
recognition of the Southern States; that he had con- 
sulted with the late Sir William Harcourt about giving 
a copy of that memorandum to Mr. Morley, and had 
decided not to give it, — whether in consequence of 
Harcourt's advice or in spite of it non constat. Nor 
did he say whether Mr. Morley knew of its existence 

32 



or not. As Mr. Gladstone was in the habit of keep- 
ing copies of all his letters and memoranda, it is 
strange that this should have escaped the attention of 
Mr. Morley, as it appears to have done. If it did, 
there can be no reason why it should not enrich the 
next edition of his biography of its author. 

Be it observed that neither Mr. Ashley nor either 
of the editors denied that their names were on the 
bankers' list of bondholders, though apparently in- 
tending to create the impression that they were not. 
How otherwise could it be denounced as "a lying list"? 

One name yet remains to be accounted for, by far 
the most important on the list in its bearing upon the 
struggle waging in America, and the only one which 
could have provoked me again to open this nauseous 
imposthume. It is that of William Ewart Gladstone, 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is quoted by his 
accomplished biographer as saying that the alleged 
subscription "is entirely void of the slightest shadow 
of support in any imaginable incident of the case." 
Let us see what warrant Mr. Gladstone had, or could 
have supposed he had, for making such a statement. 

He telegraphed from the country house where he 
was stopping to the London Star, the moment he read 
its account of his subscription as published in America: 

"I see my name placed by some strange error in 
the Confederate Loan list; have it removed." 

Of course it could not be removed if not there. He 
did not positively deny, on. this the proper occasion to 
make the denial, either that he had subscribed for 
bonds or that his name was on the list. All he said 
in this telegram he might truthfully have said had the 



securities been bought and held, as hundreds of thou- 
sands were, in the name of his broker or banker, or 
some devoted friend. 

It is not a httle strange that, when Mr. Gladstone 
returned to London, he never to the end of his days 
sent to the London press any other or more explicit 
or direct denial of having any interest in this loan. 

The denial quoted by Mr. Morley is a fragment of 
a four-page letter. It is given as a "statement" which 
Mr. Gladstone wrote to "a correspondent"; but the 
name of this correspondent is not given by Mr. Mor- 
ley, nor is the fact allowed to appear that this corre- 
spondent was an American. The suppression of both 
these facts was obviously a tribute of friendship for 
his hero. I esteem myself fortunate in being able to 
give this letter entire, which, if quoted at all, was, as 
the reader will readily see, entitled to be quoted in full. 

It was addressed to Mr. Ellis Yarnall, a conspicuous 
citizen of Pennsylvania, and a man of no mean con- 
sideration in the world of letters, who had felt war- 
ranted in giving to the readers of a leading daily 
journal of Philadelphia a caution against crediting the 
story, when it first appeared in an American print, that 
Mr. Gladstone had been a subscriber for the Confed- 
erate Loan, and who sent a copy of his communication 
to Mr. Gladstone, with a suggestion that he might 
wisely take advantage of the occasion more explicitly 
to define his sentiments toward the United States 
during our Civil War. Here is Mr. Gladstone's reply 
in full. The italics, of course, are mine. No portion 
of this letter, save the lines quoted by Mr. Morley, has 
ever appeared in any of the British journals or peri- 

34 



odicals, usually so ready to print and even to pay 
record prices for any fresh script of Mr. Gladstone : 

GLADSTONE TO ELLIS YARNALL 

Nottingham, Oct. 17, 1865, 
My dear Sir : 

I am very much obHged by yom* letter of Octr. 2nd, but it con- 
cerns me to learn that the false statement of my having been a sub- 
scriber to the Confederate Loan should have been first made, and 
should have been, as you inform me, widely circulated in America. 

The statement is not only untrue, but is so entirely void of the 
slightest shadow of support in any imaginable incident of the case, 
that I am hardly able to ascribe it to mere error, and am painfully 
perplexed as to the motives which could have prompted so mis- 
chievous a forgery. 

You are kind enough to suggest that I might make known to 
you more fully than I have hitherto done, with reference to what 
you very naturally and fairly term my "unfortunate declaration" 
at Newcastle, my sentiments on the late struggle. 

My hands are at present extremely full. I will consider care- 
fully your kind recommendation. I see one difficulty in complying 
with it. It is that after so great and wonderful a series of efforts 
with their extraordinary xq%v\\.'?>, your people can hardly be expected 
by us to bear the discussion of the case with anything like historic 
freedom. I have no doubt that in the time of the " American War " 
we should ourselves have been equally or more impatient. The 
point on which the difficulty arises is this. If an interest was felt, 
up to the period of the outbreak, in the American nation, it seemed 
to be expected, on the occurrence of that outbreak, that not only 
was that interest to be retained in the form of a desire for the 
military success of the North, but it was to take effect also in the 
form of strong antipathy to the people of the South, one third or 
one fourth part of that very nation, towards which the friendly feel- 
ing had theretofore been felt. True there was the great drawback 
of slavery ; but this had been before — and the one thing that seemed 
{to me at least) most clear from the outset teas, that the Secession, as a 

35 



fact, was a great thing for the slave and opefied fiew prospects to him. 
Now the time either has come already, or will come soon, when 
you, the whole American people, will look back upon the contest 
with the feeling that you have a common and an equal interest in 
the gallant heroic deeds of both parties : in the unexampled fortitude 
of the South, and in the equally unexampled and fmally triumphant 
efforts of the North. 

/ deplore that great blot of slavery on the Southern side which pre- 
vented it from enjoying what it would otherwise have had, the strong 
and almost universal sympathy of Europe as to the issue af the 
struggle. 

But I think slavery was the calamity of the South ; and that it 
was not for us, at any rate, to write it down as their crime. 

However, I seem to be departing from my own intention without 

fulfilling yours, and I will leave off, expressing only that wish which 

I have for so many long years without interruption entertained — a 

fervent wish for the greatness, the goodness, and the happiness of 

your country. I remain 

Sincerely yours, 

j^j,. ., ,. ^ W. E, Gladstone. 

IlIIis Yarnall, Ksqr. 

Two or three paragraphs in this letter serve to ex- 
plain, if they do not excuse, the brevity of the extract 
from it, given by the biographer, and his silence about 
the name and nationality of the correspondent. 

Mr. Gladstone declines to yield to Mr. Yarnall's re- 
quest for a fuller exposition of his "sentiments on the 
late struggle " than had been given some three years 
before in his Newcastle speech, because "after so 
great and wonderful a series of efforts with their ex- 
traordinary results your people can hardly be expected 
by us to bear the discussion of the case with anything 
like historic freedom." 

And why could we not bear it ? The struggle was 
over ; Jefferson Davis was a captive ; his armies had 

36 



surrendered and been permitted to return to their 
homes without one of their number being required to 
pay any of those customary penalties of rebelHon 
which have been exacted by all other nations and 
under every other form of government ; the United 
States flag was floating over the capitol of every State 
in the Union ; not a single descendant of the race 
whose ancestors for the most part were brought in 
chains from the coast of Africa in English ships was 
any longer held in bondage on i\merican soil, except 
for crime ; and the Government of the Union was 
working with never more harmony, efliciency or un- 
contested authority. 

What was the difficulty to which a minister of the 
Queen was exposed in tendering his congratulations 
to a friendly power at the successful suppression of an 
insurrection the only purpose of which was the con- 
servation, perpetuation and extension of slavery, "that 
great blot on the Southern side " which he professed 
to hold in abhorrence ? 

Ouofht an English statesman to have hesitated 
about felicitating President Lincoln upon the vindica- 
tion of the principles of popular sovereignty after such 
an exhibition of power for quelling disorder as had 
just been given beyond the Atlantic ; greater far than 
was ever exhibited before for any purpose by any na- 
tion, dynastically governed or otherwise? 

Could Mr. Gladstone see no difference in the cause 
we were defending and that which the slave-holding 
section of the country was assailing ? 

Mr. Morley himself very correctly says : "Secession 
was undertaken for the purpose of erecting into an 

37 



independent state a community wliose whole structure 
was moulded on a system which held labour in con- 
tempt, that kept the labourer in ignorance and cruel 
bondage, that demanded a vigilant censorship of the 
press and an army of watchmen and spies. And this 
barbaric state was to set itself up on the border of a 
great nation founded on free industry, political equal- 
ity, diffused knowledge, energetic progress. . . . 
Therefore those who fouo^ht ao-ainst secession fougfht 
against slavery and all that was involved in that dark 
burden, and whatever their motives at times may have 
been, they rendered an immortal service to humanity." 

Was a complete reversal of all these conditions in 
the South, which had already been realized when this 
letter was written, an event for which any statesman, 
whether civilized or savage, need apologize for feel- 
ing grateful ? 

Upon the subject of slavery Mr. Gladstone's utter- 
ance in this letter is open to a kind of criticism to 
which he often exposed himself in his official career. 

" True," he says, " there was the great drawback of 
slavery ; but this had been before — and the one thing 
that seemed (to me at least) most clear from the out- 
set was, that the Secession, as a fact, was a great thing 
for the slave and opened new prospects to him." 

This mio-ht no doubt have been reo-arded as an 
amusing bit of sophistry in those ancient days when 
sophists constituted a professional class ; but I ques- 
tion if any one to this day has been able to divine the 
process by which, in Mr. Gladstone's or in any other 
man's opinion, secession was a great thing for the 
slave ; or to guess what kind of prospects were those 

38 



new prospects it opened to him ; or indeed how any 
of them were at all likely to be new to him. Only 
sporting characters are going to grieve that the solu- 
tion of this conundrum, like so many of its gifted 
author's ballons d'essais, had to be buried with his 
bones. It was not secession but discomfited seces- 
sion that opened better prospects to the slave. 

Later on in his letter Mr. Gladstone rather incon- 
sequently "deplores that great blot of slavery on the 
Southern side which prevented it from enjoying" — 
what? "What it would otherwise have had, the 
strong and almost universal sympathy of Europe as 
to the issue of the struggle." 

But what less than the almost universal sympathy, 
of England at least, did it lack when Mr. Gladstone 
made his speech at Newcastle? Was it quite ingen- 
uous in him to pretend that slavery had anything to 
do with the question of recognizing the insurgents by 
him or Palmerston or Russell when they were plotting 
with the Emperor of France for such recognition, 
awaiting only the approval of their Sovereign, which 
they fortunately failed to secure? Slavery had no 
more to do with the attitude of any of those statesmen 
toward the Washington government in that crisis than 
the Thirty-nine Articles or the Nicene Creed. Evi- 
dence of this is disclosed, so far as Mr. Gladstone 
could speak for himself and colleagues, in the para- 
graph of his letter just cited. He there admits that 
had there been no slaves in the South, or had the 
South emancipated and armed them, as was suggested, 
and the whole South had become what the North al- 
ready was, the home of free labor and free men, then 

39 



any insurgents wishing to dismember the Union and 
set the fragments of it by the ears, as frankly pro- 
claimed to be the purpose by the conspirators at Ack- 
low House, would have had not only the sympathy, 
but, as is now so clear that he who runs may read 
it, the material support both of England and of 
France. 

We have in those words to Mr. Yarnall a practical 
admission that the disintegration of the American 
Union, and the awakening to a brutal activity the 
enemies of its own household, was the animating 
motive of the late Queen's advisers, and that slavery, 
the vital issue between the belligerents in America, 
was to them a purely academic question. 

When Mr. Gladstone made this extraordinary state- 
ment about the great drawback of slavery, he must 
have forgotten, or have presumed that it would never 
be known in America, that just seven months before 
he gave it utterance his chief had formally declined, 
doubtless with the approval of the whole Cabinet, a 
proffer from Jefferson Davis to manumit all the slaves 
in the "nation" which he had represented Mr. Davis to 
have created, as an inducement for its recognition by 
England, 

Synchronously with the inditing of this letter to Mr. 
Yarnall, and only a day or two after the news of the 
collapse of the Confederacy reached Paris, the first 
Lord Lytton said to me, in the presence of his brother. 
Lord Dallam, and several other gentlemen, that he 
regretted the result of the war; for he considered the 
growth of the United States a menace to civilization, 
and he had been indulging a hope that our war would 

40 



not end until we were divided into four or more sep- 
arate sovereienties. I violate no confidence in re- 
peating this statement, as I subsequently discovered 
that his lordship had previously aired the same opin- 
ion on the hustings in England. 



VII 



RETURNING now to the Cotton Loan subscrib- 
ers, I will repeat here for what it is worth, a state- 
ment made to me by Mr. D. F. Campbell on the 5th 
of November, and which I transcribe from the record 
I made of it the same day. 

"Nov. 5, 1865. Called on D. F. Campbell to 
learn his defense of the list of the holders of Confed- 
erate bonds. He insists that the list was correct ; 
that Dudley Mann told him Gladstone held stock ; 
that one day he was at Mann's rooms and Mann said, 
' If you had called a little sooner, you would have met 
Gladstone.' " 

I may here as well add that the late Lord Hough- 
ton told me when he was in the United States in 1875 
that Gladstone was down among the subscribers as 
well as his cousin, but "not for a great deal." His 
lordship might have been mistaken of course, but he 
would hardly have made this statement had he had 
no cousin sure to know all about it. 

I have before me an authentic copy of an affidavit 
which accompanied the list, the material portion of 
which reads as follows, omitting the name of the per- 
sons making it : 

41 



" I, , in the County of Middlesex, Eng- 
land, Gentleman, do solemnly and sincerely declare 
that the numbers of bonds, names and addresses and 
memoranda as to interest last paid and written upon 
seven of the annexed nine sheets of paper are in my 
handwriting and faithful copies of the numbers, names 
and entries in and upon the entry or scrip book of 
the Seven per cent. Confederate Cotton Loan, the 
same being the official book in the possession of Con- 
federate agents." 

This oath was certified to by a London Notary 
Public, in the usual form. 

There are over three hundred subscribers to the 
Confederate Loan on this sworn list.^ It embraces a 
very considerable number of representative English- 
men : members of Parliament by dozens ; of the rev- 
erend clergy not a few ; and many officers of high 
rank in the army and navy and in the administration. 
Officers of the army and navy, the reverend clergy, 
private secretaries, stipendiaries of the press, — men 
usually of limited incomes, — are not apt to flock to 
banking houses for a chance to purchase the bonds of 
Morocco or Greece or the South American Republics, 
still less of nations not yet born. Is it to be supposed 
that many, if any, of these gentlemen put up their 
money, and in such large amounts, on a gamble 
of this peculiarly risky nature, unless they had satis- 
factory reasons for believing that the army and navy 

1 1 forbear to give the names of all Mr. Gladstone's name as one of the 

these subscribers though I have them subscribers to the Confederate Loan 

before me, for I wish to give no ore has been the provocation of any cal- 

unnecessary pain. I have endeavored umny, it is not I who am the calum- 

to avoid using any names not neces- niator. 
sary to show that if the publication of 

42 



of Enofland were behind them? And what better se- 
curity could they ask than the names figuring on this 
hst? 

The loan was issued in 1863. The list, however, 
was not given by Mr. Seward to the public until the 
fall of 1865. Till then — an interval of fully two years 
— not a word of complaint was uttered by any one of 
the three hundred on that list, that his or her name 
had no business there ; or that it had been placed 
there by some "strange error," or in any other way, 
without authority. The Times, from which nothing 
of interest to the Confederates was concealed, did not 
once warn the public against this " lying list" during 
years ; nor did any of its three or more inculpated 
editors utter a single shriek that they had been made 
the victims of a " false and malicious forgery " until 
after the insurrection had been put down and the 
Confederate bonds had been transmitted into "alms 
for the wallet of oblivion." 

Does charity compel us to assume that there was 
not one of these three hundred friends of the Confed- 
eracy who did not care enough for Mr. Delane to tell 
him betimes that he was one of the victims of a "ma- 
licious imposture"? nor one patriotic enough to advise 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer that his official as 
well as personal character had become the prey of a 
"mischievous forgery"? Credat JudcEUs! 

When made aware of such abuse of their names, 
even so late as 1865, the question naturally arises, 
why were not measures taken at once by these reputed 
bondholders to have their names stricken from the list? 
Why wait until every chance of advantage from being 

43 



on it had passed away, before complaining of the 
wrong from which they had so long been silently suf- 
fering? Why rest so patiently liable to the suspicion 
that they were laboring under a belief that the South 
would triumph; that Jefferson Davis had really created 
a nation; that the clamors of the Union would in due 
time cease to be audible across the Atlantic; and their 
7% bonds marketable in London at ^150 or ;^ 175 in- 
stead of ;^90? 

Then, ag-ain, the Confederate bankers were amono^ 
the most widely known bankers in Europe: Fraser, 
Trenholm & Co., of London; James Spence, of Liv- 
erpool; Erlanger & Co., of Paris; and Schroeder & 
Co., of Holland. Any of these houses could have told 
any inquirer whether his name was on their list, and, if 
there, how it came there. Has any newspaper in 
London or elsewhere informed its readers that Mr. 
Gladstone, or any of the repudiating editors, or Mr. 
Hope, or indeed any single one of the three hundred 
on the list, ever asked either of these bankers, before 
or since the publication of the list, by whom or by 
whose authority their names were placed there? 
Would any one who needed such information have 
failed to seek it where it was so easily to be found? 

Less than a dozen of that three hundred were all that 
ever denied being subscribers to the loan; and none 
of them, so far as yet appears, has denied that his 
name was on the list, and I have yet to hear of one 
of either class who ever brought any banker to book 
for placing his name, or allowing it to be placed, on it. 

The silence of the bankers in charge of the London 
list is quite as mysterious as the apathy of their 

44 



aggrieved subscribers. No one of them has ever come 
to the defense of the complainants, nor to this day has 
any one of them admitted that the signatures were 
forgeries. It is unnecessary to look for an explana- 
tion of this persistent silence. From every quarter it 
leaps to the eyes. As Cicero said, when Cataline 
asked to have the question of his guilt referred to a 
vote of the senate : 

Quid est Catalina ? Ecquid attendis ? Ecqtiid 
animadvertis Jiortun sileniium ? Patiuntiir tacent: 
Quid expectas auctoritateni loqtienti^nn, quorum vol- 
7intate7n tacitorum perspicts f . . . de te autem 
Catalina, quuvi quiescunt, probant ; quum patiuntur, 
decernant ; qtuiiu tacent clamant} 

Christian charity is scarcely elastic enough to cover 
such an expanse of credulity as would be implied in 
presuming that any of these prominent men had been 
so long totally ignorant of the use which had been 
made of their names, and had never felt the shame of 
it till the peace disclosed to them their folly. 



VIII 



IT may be said that the impropriety of the Queen's 
Chancellor of the Exchequer contributing money to 
the insurgents in the United States was so glaring as 
to be incredible; and that Mr. Bright and Mr. Seward, 

1 Cicero contra L. Catalina — I. nothing. What can you hope from 

viii. a verdict thus so plainly disclosed ? 

What would you, Cataline? For They act not, Cataline, because they 

what do you wait? Do you not com- approve what I say; their toleration 

prehend the silence of this assembly ? of my denunciations convicts you; 

They endure your appeal but say their very silence cries out against you. 

45 



as well as myself, were bound to consider the list a 
forgery, so far as he was concerned, without a ques- 
tion. I agree that such ought to have been the case ; 
but let us see if it was so clear that such was the case, 
and that Mr. Gladstone's friends could claim for him 
the benefit of such a presumption. Mr. Bright, who 
knew Mr. Gladstone much better than I did, did not 
feel quite prepared to give him the benefit of any such 
presumption. If his opinion might not be conclusive 
either way, there is stronger light on this subject at 
our hand. 

It was only a few months after this Confederate 
Loan was negotiated and before the transaction had 
yet transpired at Richmond, I believe, that Mr. Glad- 
stone perpetrated that far more serious breach of 
official propriety than a subscription for ten times 
^2000 for the Confederate Loan would have been. It 
was when at Newcastle he allowed himself to attempt 
to prepare the world for England's recognition of the 
Confederates by the following statement : 

" We know quite well that the people of the North- 
ern States have not yet drunk of the cup — they are 
still trying to hold it far from their lips — which all 
THE REST OF THE WORLD SEE they nevertheless must 
drink of We may have our own opinions about 
slavery ; we may be for or against the South ; but 
THERE IS NO DOUBT that Jefferson Davis and other 
leaders of the South have made an army, they are 
making, it appears, a navy, and they have made what 
is more than either, they have made a nation^ 

Three months before this reckless utterance to one 
of the largest collections of Englishmen the orator's 

46 



winged words ever reached, Mr. Gladstone wrote to 
his wife : 

" Lord Pahnerston has come exactly to my mind 
about some early representation of a friendly kind to 
America, if we can get France and Russia to join." 

He, Palmerston and Russell, the three heads of the 
Government (Mr. Morley tells us, as we also know 
from other sources), were at this very time agreed 
that even in case of failure to secure the cooperation 
of France and Russia, England alone if necessary 
ought to recognize the Southern Confederacy as an 
independent republic. 

How did this differ morally or politically from pur- 
chasing Confederate bonds, except that in the latter 
case he onl}^ gave a few thousand pounds to aid the 
rebellion, while in the other he pledged all the power 
of the United Kingdom to make those bonds good. 

The fact is, as Mr. Morley tells us, "at a very 
early period Mr. Gladstone formed the opinion that 
any attempt to restore the Union by force would and 
must fail," and insisted to the last that "the public 
opinion of this country (England) was iinanimoiis that 
the restoration of the American Union by force was 
unattainable." 

To the Duchess of Sutherland Mr. Gladstone wrote 
in 1861 : 

"No distinction can in my eyes be broader than 
the distinction between the question whether the 
Southern ideas of slavery are right and the question 
whether they can justip^iably be put down by war 
FROM THE North." 

In July, 1862, he wrote to the Duke of Argyle : 

47 



" My opinion is that it is in vain, and wholly unsus- 
tained by precedent, to say nothing shall be done 
until both parties are desirous of it." 

In 1862, September 24th, Lord Palmerston wrote to 
Mr. Gladstone " that he himself and Lord Russell 
thought the time was fast approaching when an offer 
of mediation ought to be made by England, France 
and Russia, and that Russell was going privately to 
instruct the ambassador at Paris to sound the French 
Government. ' Of course,' Lord Palmerston said, ' no 
actual step would be taken without the sanction of the 
Cabinet. But if I am not mistaken, you would be in- 
clined to approve such a course.' The proposal would 
be made to both North and South. If both should 
accept, an armistice would follow, and negotiations on 
the basis of separation. If both shoitld decline, then 
Lord Palmerston assumed that they would ack7iow- 
ledge the independence of the South. The next day 
Mr. Gladstone replied. He was glad to learn what 
the Prime Minister had told him, and for two reasons 
especially he desired that the proceedings should be 
prompt." 

Russell had already written Palmerston three days 
earlier, saying explicitly, " I agree further, that in case 
of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the South- 
ern States as an independent state. "^ 

So far towards a recognition of the insurgents had 
the three heads of the Queen's grovernment advanced 
when Mr. Gladstone went to Newcastle and let fall 
the sentence about the American War, already cited, 
" of which," says Mr. Morley, " he was destined never 

1 Morley's " Life of Gladstone," p. 76. 
48 



to hear the last" ; " but a sentence which he undoubt- 
edly thought, and not without good reason, as we have 
seen, expressed the views of the Qtieens government 
and foreshadowed its poHcy." 

On reading- this speech the day after it was made, 
our minister, Mr. Adams, wrote in his diary as fol- 
lows : " If Gladstone be any exponent at all of the 
views of the Cabinet then is my term likely to be very 
short. The ani7mis, as it respects Mr. Davis, and 
the recognition of the rebel cause, is very apparent."^ 

The Emperor of France, having constituted him- 
self the wet-nurse of a young empire in Mexico, had 
as much interest in having republicanism crushed in 
America as England had, and was pressing England 
and Russia to join him in a project of interference. 
But the London Cabinet was not united, happily for 
all parties, upon that subject. Mr. Gladstone writes 
home on November 1 1 : 

'* I am afraid we shall do little or nothing in the 
business of America. But I will send you definite in- 
telligence. . . . 

"Nov. 12. The United States affair has ended 
and not well. Lord Russell rather turned tail. He 
gave way without resolvtely fighting out his battle. 
However, though we decline for the moment, the 
answer is put upon grounds and in terms which leave 
the matter very open for the future. . . . 

"Nov. 13. I think the French will make our an- 
swer about America public ; at least it is very pos- 
sible, ^ut I hope they may not take it as a positive 
refusal, or at any rate that they may the7nselves act in 

1 Address of Charles Francis Adams before the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

49 



the matter. It ivill he elear that zve concur ivith them, 
that the war should cease. Palmers ton gave to Rus- 
sell's proposal a feeble and half-hearted support." 

It will be apparent from these statements and cita- 
tions of his biographer that of the three leading mem- 
bers of the Queen's Cabinet Mr. Gladstone was the 
one most disappointed at its. failure to recognize the 
Confederacy. 

What the final consequences of such a step would 
have been will never be known, but the immediate 
consequences would have been a war which no nation 
in the world would probably have had more reason 
than the British to regret. That this statement is not 
recklessly made, it is enough to quote the following 
from a private despatch from Mr. Seward to Mr. 
Adams in August of 1862. 



j=> 



No. 314. 

Department of State, 

Washington, August 2, 1862. 
Sir: 

In a confidential note, under the date of July 19th, you give an 
account of a debate which occurred on the i8th of that month in 
the House of Commons on the subject of American affairs. After 
reviewing that discussion, you announce the conclusion that every- 
thing in England depends on the military results which shall happen 
in the United States ; that very serious reverses would be likely to 
bring on a recognition of the independence of the insurgents at an 
early moment. You next remark that you are not quite sure that 
under the supposed circumstance such an act, however hostile in 
spirit, could be considered in itself a just cause of war, and that the 
doctrines we have maintained heretofore have claimed a considera- 
ble latitude in judging for ourselves of the propriety of such a pro- 
ceeding. You proceed to state that, in the present critical state of 
matters, you think it a duty to suggest to me the expediency of 

50 



furnishing you with the views of the Government, so that you may 
be prepared to take a course in harmony with them in certain con- 
tingencies. You close with the pregnant observation that the ten- 
dency in Europe seems to you to be almost unavoidably accelerating 
the necessity on our part of preparing to meet the emergency that 
may arise in the South. 

First. The debate does not impress me with the apprehensions 
you have expressed. It is indeed manifest in the tone of the 
speeches, as well as in the general tenor of popular discussions, that 
neither the responsible ministers, nor the House of Commons, nor 
the active portion of the people of Great Britain sympathize with 
this Government, and hope, or even wish, for its success in sup- 
pressing the insurrection ; and that, on the contrary, the whole 
British nation, speaking practically, desire and expect the dis- 
memberment of the Republic. I cannot deny that these sentiments 
must insensibly influence the administration, and give its policy a 
hostile direction. But these sentiments are, after all, in a great 
measure speculations ; and they may very well exist, and yet the 
Government, and certainly the people, of Great Britain may be en- 
tirely unprepared by any responsible action to attempt to precipitate 
a change here whose consequences may be momentous, even to 
themselves. 



We cannot forget that we are a younger branch of the British 
family ; that we have not been especially reverential of the senior 
branch, and have even been ambitious to surpass it in wealth, power 
and influence among the nations. To these facts it is to be added 
that, in the very heat of competition, we have broken, have aban- 
doned the course, and have divided ourselves into suicidal factions. 
The success of the insurgents would make it sure that the race could 
never be resumed, while the triumph of the Government would prob- 
ably reanimate the national ambition once more. At this moment 
we have encountered an unexpected reverse, which encourages our 
eager enemies, wherever they may be, to hope for our signal and 
complete overthrow. Did ever any nation, at once so presumptuous, 
yet so unwise, and so apparently unfortunate, secure the absolute 

51 



forbearance of a rival it had boldly challenged? Certainly not, and 
therefpre I reckon not upon any sentimental forbearance of the British 
Government. The American people understand, as well as their 
Government does, that none is to be expected or even desired. Still 
the disfavor of Great Britain is inherently illiberal ; and happily the 
unwarrantable and too unreserved exhibition of it naturally rouses 
the American people to a sense of their danger, and tends to recall 
them from unworthy domestic strife to the necessity of regaining 
the national prestige they have so unwisely lost. Allowing now 
British prejudice and passion their full effect, the Government of 
Great Britain must, nevertheless, be expected to act with a due re- 
gard to the safety, honor and welfare of the British Empire. 



Would Great Britain profit by a war with us? Certainly neither 
nation could profit by the war while it should be in actual opera- 
tion. But it is said she might divide and conquer us. What 
would she gain by that? Would the whole or any part of the 
United States accept her sovereignty and submit to her authority? 
The United States, under their present organization and Constitu- 
tion, must always be a peaceful nation, practically friendly to Great 
Britain, as well as to all foreign states, and so they must always be 
conservative of the peace of nations. Let this organization be 
struck down by any foreign combinations, what guarantee could 
Great Britain then have of influence or favor, or even commercial 
advantage to be derived from this country.? Even if this nation, 
after having lost its liberties and its independence, should remain 
practically passive, who is to restrain the ambitions of European 
states for influence and dominion on this side of the Atlantic ; and 
how long, under the agitation of such ambitions, could Europe ex- 
pect to remain in peace with itself ? But what warrant have the 
British Government for expecting to conquer the United States, and 
to subjugate and desolate them, or to dictate to them terms of 
peace? A war urged against us by Great Britain could not fail to 
reunite our people. Every sacrifice that their independence could 
require would be cheerfully and instantly made, and every force 
and every resource which has hitherto been held in reserve in a 
civil war, because the necessity for immediately using it has not 

52 



been felt, would be brought into requisition. I shall not willingly 
believe that Great Britain deliberately desires such a war, as I am 
sure that every honorable and generous effort will be made by the 
United States to avoid it. 

In the second place, I observe that apprehensions of a change of 
attitude by Great Britain are built in some degree upon the sup- 
posed probability that very serious reverses to the national cause 
may occur. None such, however, have yet occurred. We cannot 
and do not pretend to reckon upon the chances of a single battle 
or a single campaign. Such chances are, perhaps, happily beyond 
human control and even human foresight. But the general course 
of the war and its ultimate results are subjects of calculation, on a 
survey of forces and circumstances with the aid of experience. 
We cheerfully leave the study of the probabilities of this war, in 
this way, to all statesmen and governments whom it may concern, 
declaring for ourselves that while we apprehend no imtnediate dan- 
ger to the present military cojidition, the most serious reverses which 
ca?i happen will not produce one tnomenfs hesitation on the part of the 
Government or the people of the United States in the purpose of main- 
taining the Union, or sensibly shake their confidence in a triumphant 
conclusion of the war. 

In the third place, it is impossible when writing to you (however 
confidentially) to feel sure that when what is expressed, shall ulti- 
mately become public, it will not be thought to have been written 
for effect or to produce an impression upon the British Government. 

Fourthly, I can hardly realize that the tenor of this correspon- 
dence has left you in uncertainty of the President's views in regard 
to what proceeding you shall adopt in the event that the apprehen- 
sions you have expressed shall be suddenly realized. 

Notwithstanding, however, all the considerations I have brought 
into view, you are entitled to the explanation you ask, and I pro- 
ceed to give it confidentially. If the British Government shall in 
any way approach you directly or indirectly with propositions which 
assume or contemplate an appeal to the President on the subject 
of our internal affairs, whether it seem to imply a purpose to dictate 
or to mediate, or to advise or even to solicit or persuade, you will 
answer that you are forbidden to debate, to hear, or in any way re- 
ceive, entertain, or transmit any communication of the kind. You 

53 



will make the same answer whether the proposition come from the 
British Government alone or from that Government in combination 
with any other Power. 

If you are asked an opinion what reception the President would 
give to such a proposition if made here, you will reply that you are 
not instructed, but you have no reason for supposing that it would 
be entertained. 

If, contrary to our expectation, the British Governvieiit, either alone 
or in combifiation with any other Govei'nment, should acknowledge the 
insurgents, while you are retnaining without further itistructions from 
this Department coticerning that event, you will immediately suspend 
the exercise of your functions, a?id give notice of that suspension to 
Earl Russell and to this Departmetit. If the British Government 
fuake any act or declaration of war against the United States you will 
desist front your functions, ask a passport and returti without delay 
to this Capital. 

I have now, in behalf of the United States and by the authority of 
their Chief .Executive Magistrate, performed an important duty. Its 
possible consequences have been lueighed, and its solemnity is therefore 
felt ajid freely acknowledged. This duty has brought us to 

MEET AND CONFRONT THE DANGER OF A WAR WITH GrEAT BRITAIN, 
AND THE OTHER StATES ALLIED WITH THE INSURGENTS WHO ARE 
IN ARMS FOR THE OVERTHROW OF THE AMERICAN UnION. YoU 
WILL PERCEIVE THAT WE HAVE APPROACHED THE CONTEMPLATION 
OF THAT CRISIS WITH THE CAUTION WHICH GREAT RELUCTANCE 
HAS INSPIRED. BuT I FEEL THAT YOU WILL ALSO HAVE PER- 
CEIVED THAT THE CRISIS HAS NOT APPALLED US. 



IX 

RETURNING now for a moment to Mr. Glad- 
stone's Newcastle speech, we find, on the 8ist 
page of the second volume of his biography, Mr, Glad- 
stone's "own estimate of an error," says Mr. Morley, 
"that was in truth serious enough, and that has since 
been most of all exaggerated by those sections of 

54 



society and opinion who at the time most eagerly and 
freely shared the very same delusion." 

After what I have said of that speech it is perhaps 
but just that I should quote the apology for it, here 
referred to. 

Before doing so, however, I will quote a few perti- 
nent words from a speech delivered by Disraeli, the 
leader of the Tory Party, in the House of Commons, 
on the 5th of February, 1863, at the first session of 
Parliament after the Newcastle speech: 

"Her Majesty's Government," he said, "commis- 
sioned one of their members to repair to the chief 
seats of industry in the country to announce, as I un- 
derstood it, an entire change in the policy which they 
had throughout supported and sanctioned; the declara- 
tion (about Jefferson Davis's army, navy and country) 
was made fo7^mally and avozvedly zvith the consent and 
sanctio7i of the Government. Now, Sir, what did that 
declaration mean? If it meant anything, it meant 
that the Southern States would be recoQfnized; be- 
cause, if it be true that they have created armies, 
navies and a people, we are bound by every prin- 
ciple of policy and of public law to recognize their 
political existence." 

Lord Palmerston followed Disraeli in the debate, 
and at considerable length, but he did not deny that 
statesman's allegation that Gladstone spoke with the 
authority of the Government at Newcastle, nor refer 
at all to American affairs : a reticence more significant 
than any words he could with propriety have uttered. 

We will now invite the reader's attention to Mr. 
Gladstone's post-obit apology for that speech : 

55 



"I have yet to record," he writes (July, 1896) in the 
fragment already more than once mentioned, "an un- 
doubted error, the most singular and palpable, I may 
add the least excusable of them all, especially since it 
was committed so late as in the year 1862, when I had 
outlived half a century. In the autumn of that year, 
and in a speech delivered after a public dinner at 
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I declared in the heat of the 
American struggle that Jefferson Davis had made a 
nation, that is to say, that the division of the Ameri- 
can Republic by the establishment of a Southern or 
secession state was an accomplished fact. Strange to 
say, this declaration, most unwarrantable to be made 
by a minister of the crown with no authority other 
than his own {but he kiieiv that he expressed the senti- 
ment of the controlling Tnembcrs of the Government^, 
was not due to any feeling of partizanship for the 
South or hostility to the North. The fortunes of the 
South were at their zenith. Many who wished well 
to the Northern cause despaired of its success. The 
friends of the North in England were beginning to 
advise that it should give way, for the avoidance of 
further bloodshed and greater calamity. [Was that 
the reason, though?] I weakly supposed that the time 
had come when respectful suggestions of this kind, 
founded on the necessity of the case, were required by 
a spirit of that friendship which, in so many contin- 
gencies of life, has to offer sound recommendations 
with a knowledge that they will not be popular. Not 
only was this a misjudgment of the case, but, even if 
it had been otherwise, I was not the person to make 
the declaration. I really, though most strangely, be- 
lieved that it was an act of friendliness to all America 

56 



to recognize that the struggle was virtually at an 
end. [?] I was not one of those who on the ground 
of British interests desired a division of the American 
Union. [?] My view was distinctly opposite. [?] I 
thought that while the Union continued it never could 
exercise any dangerous pressure upon Canada to 
estrange it from the empire — our honor, as I thought, 
rather than our interest, forbidding its surrender. 
But were the Union split, the North, no longer checked 
by the jealousies of slave-power, would seek a partial 
compensation for its loss in annexing, or trying to an- 
nex, British North America. Lord Palmerston de- 
sired the severance as a diminutioji of a dangerous 
power, but prudently held his tongue. 

"That my opinion was founded upon a false estimate 
of the fact was the very least part of my fault. I did 
not perceive the gross impropriety of such an utter- 
ance from a cabinet minister, of a power allied in blood 
and language, and bound to loyal neutrality ; the case 
being further exaggerated by the fact that we were 
already, so to speak, under indictment before the world 
for not (as was alleged) having strictly enforced the 
laws of neutrality in the matter of the cruisers My 
offence was indeed only a mistake, but one of incred- 
ible grossness, and with such consequences of offence 
and -alarm attached to it, that my failing to perceive 
them justly exposed me to very severe blame. It il- 
lustrates vividly that incapacity which my mind so 
long retained^ and perhaps still exhibits, an incapacity 
of viewing subjects all round, in their extraneous as 
well as their internal properties, and thereby of knoiv- 
ing when to be sileiit arid when to speak. 
' " I am the more pained and grieved, because I have 

57 



for the last twenty-five years received from the Gov- 
ernment and people of America tokens of goodwill 
which could not fail to arouse my undying gratitude. 
When we came to the arbitration at Geneva, my words 
were cited as part of the proof of hostile animus. 
Meantime I had prepared a lengthened statement to 
show from my abundant declarations on other occa- 
sions that there was and could be on my part no such 
animus. 

" I was desirous to present this statement to the 
arbitrators. My colleagues objected so largely to the 
proceeding that I desisted. In this I think they 
probably were wrong. I addressed my paper to the 
American minister for the information of his Govern- 
ment, and Mr. Secretary Fish gave me, so far as my 
intention was concerned, a very handsome acquittal, 

" And strange to say, post hoc though perhaps not 
propter hoc, the United States have been that country 
of the world in which the most signal marks of honour 
have been paid me, and in which my name has been 
the most popular, the only parallels being Italy, 
Greece, and the Balkan Peninsula." 



X 



THERE are several features of this paper which 
greatly impair its value as an apology. 
First, it was written in 1896, after Mr. Gladstone 
had retired from public life, and in the eighty-sixth 
year of his age — a period of life when our recollec- 
tion of events happening a quarter of a century be- 
fore, is apt to require vouchers. 

58 



Second, if his offense was indeed as he says "only 
a mistake, but one of incredible grossness," why did 
he leave this apology in his portfolio for the use of 
his biographer instead of proclaiming it in his lifetime 
to the people whom he confesses to have ungratefully 
wronged. The espi'it d'escalier has never been known 
to make or much improve a reputation. An apology 
for an "incredible impropriety" gets rather moldy if 
left too long in the inculpate's portfolio and finally 
reaches the public through no lineal hand. 

And how did it happen that for five and twenty 
years its author not only never showed the least inter- 
est by speech or letter in the success of the Lincoln 
government or in the preservation of our Union, but 
did exhibit such irrepressible interest in the success of 
its enemies as to be betrayed by it into a conspicuous 
display of joy at the supposed evidences of Confed- 
erate success which he recapitulated, not a little to 
the astonishment of his less inflamed Newcastle audi- 
ence ? 

The secretion of a foreign body detained for so long 
a time in any man's physical system would have in- 
evitably resulted in blood poisoning. The fact that 
this apologia was a post-mortem deliverance justifies 
the apprehension that such secretions may prove as 
fatal psychically as physically. Few will read it with- 
out being reminded of the blunderbuss against religion 
and morality which Bolingbroke lacked the courage 
to discharge himself but left adequate inducements to 
another to draw the trigger after his demise. 

At an early stage of our war the Duke of Argyle 
sent Mr. Gladstone a letter of Mrs. Harriet Beecher 

59 



Stowe. In acknowledging it, "he expresses," says 
Mr. Morley, " all possible respect for her character 
and talents, but thinks she has lost intellectual integ- 
rity.'' The writer of this impertinence lived long 
enough — whether he ever did or not — to have real- 
ized that it was not Mrs. Stowe's intellectual integrity 
that was lost, and that Mrs. Stowe was neither the 
first nor the most innocent person of eminence who 
had been accused of" having: a devil and beino- mad" 
by Pharisees who were both mad and obsessed of 
devils. 

Again in this apology for his Newcastle speech Mr. 
Gladstone speaks of a " lengthened statement " he had 
addressed to our minister (Mr. Schenck) " for the 
information of his Government," and adds as the re- 
sult of it, "Mr. Fish gave me, so far as my intention 
was concerned, a very handsome acquittal." 

Why does not Mr. Morley produce Mr. Fish's "very 
handsome acquittal" ; for obviously it would have been 
of far more value for Mr. Gladstone's purpose than 
anything Mr. Morley has left us upon this subject. 
Incredible as it seems that Mr. Morley should have 
failed to produce this acquittal, if he had one to pro- 
duce, what I am about to add will seem yet more in- 
credible. Mr. Gladstone never received such an ac- 
quittal from Mr. Fish, or from the Washington 
Government. That fact sufficiently accounts for the 
effulgence of its absence from Mr. Morley's record. 
My readers have a right to presume that upon this 
question Mr. Gladstone's authority is not only better 
than mine, but the very best authority possible. There- 
fore I appeal to Mr. Gladstone himself for the evidence 

60 



that he had no authority whatever to use Mr. Fish's 
name in the way it is used in this mea culpa. That 
evidence is found in a letter written by him two years 
later to Mr. Schenck in which he assigns, as his ex- 
cuse for writing" it, the fact that the answer of Mr. 
Schenck to his first letter did not answer his purpose 
because, and only because, it did not express the opin- 
ion of the Washington Government. Here is the 
letter : 

GLADSTONE TO SCHENCK 

lo Downing St., Whitehall, 
Feb. 20, 1874. 
My dear General Schetick : 

When I had the pleasure of seeing you on Tuesday I had not 
been displaced by a successor, and I refrained from troubling you 
with the word which, now that I am a private individual only, I 
have to say. 

The kind letter which I received from you a short time back on 
the subject of my own voluminous epistle, was, as I have already 
said, entirely satisfactory to me as an expression of y6ur own feehngs. 

What I hope is that you will at some fitting time be enabled to 
give me a like assurance on behalf of your Government, since it was 
under their authority that the Case of the U. S. was framed and 
published and on that authority still rest the personal charges 
against me contained in it. 

Though sorry to clog your wings during your holiday with so 
much as a thought of business, I trust this note may not occasion 
to you any sensible amount of care and trouble. 

Very faithfully yours, 

W. E. Gladstone. 

His Excellency the American Afinister, 

If Mr. Gladstone ever received in reply to this letter 
or otherwise, any assurance on behalf of Mr. Schenck's 
government such as he professes to have received, 

61 



I have here given Mr. Morley what I hope he will 
regard as an eligible opportunity of producing it. 
Till such letter is produced I must persist in affirming 
that Mr. Gladstone never received such a letter or 
such an assurance. 

XI 

IT is anything but an agreeable duty to track the 
eccentricities of genius into the mire where there is 
no pleasant standing; but it is not I that have created 
the necessity. 

Had the Confederates triumphed, and had the 
Northern States drunk of the cup which, at the time 
of the Issue of this loan, Mr. Gladstone was proclaim- 
ing from the housetops to his countrymen in a tone 
of undisguised satisfaction "all the world sees that 
they must drink of," I may be asked if I believe that 
Mr. Gladstone would ever have accepted those bonds 
or the 7% interest to which the owner would have 
been entitled. 

It is not for me to say what Mr. Gladstone would 
have done in such or any other future event. He 
twice admits that his name was on the list, first in ask- 
ing to have it removed, and later in pronouncing it a 
forgery. He never appears to have taken any pains 
to call any banker, broker or friend to account for its 
being there or to have it stricken off, nor has any 
banker, broker or friend as yet volunteered to discharge 
that friendly office for him. Neither, if there, has he 
offered any explanation or apology for it, a duty he 
certainly owed to the Queen, his Mistress, if not 
to Mr. Seward. 

62 



There can be no doubt that no one but Mr. Gladstone 
could have claimed either the principal or the interest 
of those bonds. If our Union had been wrecked, and 
if his Confederate nation had really been created, why 
should he not have shared in the plunder with the 
other wreckers who were swarming on the shore wait- 
ing for our Republic to go to pieces? I do not think 
I am guilty of the least exaggeration when I affirm 
that Mr. Gladstone did more to encouragfe and accredit 
the Confederate cause throughout the world than any 
other single individual in the British Empire. It was 
not his fault that Jefferson Davis did not realize the 
Newcastle prophecy. For that speech alone he would 
have deserved to be proclaimed the hero, the Crom- 
well, of his new nation, the only nation that would 
have been left in the world of which Slavery was the 
boasted corner-stone. After breaking into a friendly 
neighbor's house, and taking all his silver and linen, 
what virtue or reason would there be in leaving- the 
miniatures of the family? 

As History is Philosophy teaching by example it 
may be profitable for teaching, for reproof and for cor- 
rection to recall here an incident which commenced 
preaching more than twenty-one centuries ago. 
Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian general, nego- 
tiated a treaty with Rome, one of the clauses of 
which provided that the Carthaginians should not de- 
clare war against any nation without the sanction of 
the Roman Senate. Masinissa, the King of Numidia, 
an ally of Rome, took advantage of this treaty to en- 
large his territory at the expense of the Carthaginians. 
The latter, having their hands tied by this treaty, ap- 

63 



pealed to Rome. Being then engaged in a war with 
Macedonia, Rome gave evasive answers; but finally- 
sent ten commissioners to Africa to settle the differ- 
ences between her aforetime allies. Cato, the Cen- 
sor, also sometimes called the Just, was the chief of 
this embassy. He was so impressed by the wealth 
and prosperity of Carthage (which he had believed to 
be in a condition of hopeless decadence) that he per- 
suaded the commissioners to return with him to Rome 
without attempting to reconcile the dissidents. When 
rendering an account of their mission to the Senate, 
Cato allowed some Libyan figs to fall from his toga 
upon the floor of the senate chamber, and then sig- 
nificantly remarked, "The land which produced those 
figs is but three days' sail from Rome." From that 
day forth he terminated all his discourses on African 
politics with these now hackneyed words: '' Ccetertim 
censeo Carthagmein esse delejidam'' ("Still Carthage 
should be destroyed"). 

I will now in conclusion allow myself to ask if 
Mr. Gladstone's declaration to Mr. Yarnall about the 
Confederate bonds is susceptible of any more chari- 
table construction than that it was another exhibition 
of that "incapacity of viewing subjects all round, in 
their extraneous as well as their interior properties, 
and therefore of knowino- when to be silent and when 
to speak," which he himself avowed as his only excuse 
for his Newcastle speech? I feel also entitled to ask 
what excuse Mr. Gladstone, his friends, or his biog- 
rapher have for neglecting to get from the Confed- 
erate bankers, either a denial that Mr. Gladstone's 

64 



name was on any of their lists, or, if there, by whose 
or what authority ; who paid the money, if any was 
paid ; who received the interest when it became due ; 
who received the bonds, and where the bonds are 
now ? 

Until Mr. Morley had qualified himself to answer 
these questions I do not think he was at liberty to 
describe the publication of the bankers' list of the 
stockholders of Confederate bonds as "a calumny," 
nor Mr. Gladstone to describe it as "a mischievous 
forgery," nor the late Mr. Delane, then editor of the 
London Times, to call it "a lying list." 

In the language of Mr. Seward to me on the 4th 
of November, 1865, "The British nation owes us 
fuller and more free information concerninof the char- 
acter of those conspirators than its press has thus far 
given." 



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